


What Evil Lurks

by Cuddlesquid



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Book/Movie Fusion, Gen, M/M, Mystery, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-27
Updated: 2012-12-03
Packaged: 2017-11-19 17:03:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/575578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cuddlesquid/pseuds/Cuddlesquid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year is 1921, and the criminal element of London faces a dangerous foe--a mysterious man who calls himself the Shadow. Cloaked in darkness and armed with what seem like superhuman abilities, he aims to bring the city's worst to justice. </p>
<p>But behind the Shadow's fearsome disguise is Sherlock Holmes, whose brilliance and awkward demeanor hide a secret more terrible than his alternate identity...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. out of the dark

_January, 1921_

Greg Lestrade knew he was about to die.

The certainty that settled across him was cold and heavy, immobilizing him just as surely as the tranquilizer running through his veins. He’d known the criminals in this city had gotten bolder and fiercer over the past few months, but up until tonight he’d assumed they weren’t nearly fearless enough to attack a Detective Inspector.

And then, not two hours ago and barely half a block from Scotland Yard, he’d been muscled into a car.

After drugging and interrogating him, the thugs had brought him to the unfinished Southwark Bridge. Though nearly completed, the bridge wouldn’t be ready for traffic until the summer. Tangles of scaffolding clung to the rails, leading down and away into the dark, stinking waters of the Thames.

“Right, boys. Over here.”

Rough hands grabbed Lestrade, and his gut lurched sluggishly as he was dragged to the railing. Whatever they’d doped him up with in the car had been ridiculously strong, so that now even the fear felt like it reached him through a layer of cotton balls.

“Well, Detective Inspector, looks like you get to retire early.” The gangster who leered at him now was a pale, pudgy specimen, his eyes beady beneath the brim of his fedora. “Too bad for those kids of yours, eh?”

“I don’t…” Lestrade’s throat was dry. “I don’t even know… who you are.”

“Ah, but you would’ve, that’s the thing. Matter of fact, who knows what you would’ve turned up if you kept poking your nose where it didn’t belong? The warehouse district’s no place for a copper. Far too dangerous.”

“Now look—”

He was interrupted by a sharp click, and through his blurring vision he could just see the shape of a gun barrel swim into view inches from his nose.

“Too bad they don’t give out pensions for suicides,” the gangster quipped, as his cohorts chuckled appreciatively. “Your kids better not take after dear, dumb old dad in the brains department.”

Lestrade swallowed hard. He was about to die, but by God, he’d die with his eyes open. He could at least deny his murderer the satisfaction of knowing he was scared.

And then, somewhere in the darkness, the laughter began.

It was a deep, smooth baritone, filling the space around them. There was something scornful and mocking in it, something frighteningly self-assured... and yet the armed gangsters seemed more terrified by it than their helpless captive.

**"Bedlam Bobby."** The words came from empty air, cool and silky. **"Real name Michael Robert Campbell, age thirty-six. Bootlegger, drug runner, murderer on American and English soil. And actually quite sane, despite the catchy nickname."**

Beady-Eyes lowered his gun, his fat face suddenly ashen. "What the hell--"

**"Ah, but you don't believe in Hell, do you? Most people who do believe would consider the attempted murder of a Detective Inspector to be a sin. But the idea of killing an officer of the law doesn't faze _you,_ oh no."**

"Bobby," one of the thugs whispered, his huge hands shaking so hard he couldn't hold on to Lestrade's arm. "Bobby, it's _him--"_

"Shut up, Max! It's a trick, just some kinda setup!"

Again that rolling laugh rippled through the cold air. The sound seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere--from the bridge supports, from the water, from inside Lestrade's own pounding head.

**"Did you really think you were untouchable, Bedlam Bobby? Did you really think no one would try to stop you?"**

Suddenly the voice was a low, sinister whisper, so close that Lestrade could have sworn he felt the speaker standing next to him.

**"Did you think _I_ wouldn't stop you?"**

Bobby jumped, making an extremely undignified little yelping noise, and fired a shot off into the murky air somewhere to his left. That only provoked another peal of derisive laughter; the sound almost seemed to vibrate through the bridge underneath them.

The skinnier of Bobby's thugs dived for the car--Lestrade dimly remembered having seen some sort of nasty automatic gun wedged between the front seats--but suddenly jerked backwards, as if he'd run into an invisible wall. Lestrade saw a splash of something dark and slick across the man's mouth as he went down... and was it his imagination, or was there a patch of space close to him where the air shimmered like the air above a fire?

**"You can't run from me. Just as you can't run from the things you've done. I'll haunt you as they haunt you. Every sleepless night, every moment of dread, every time you feel an irrational panic rising--I'll be there. You'll always hear me. You'll always be afraid. Unless you go back to Scotland Yard and turn yourself in, tonight."**

"The hell I will," Bobby managed, in a far shakier voice than before.

**"You really must be mad."** The voice dripped pure scorn. **"Or, more likely, a complete idiot. I'll tell you one more time. You go to Scotland Yard and give the police an honest account of your criminal career, or you deal with me."**

From the ground, the half-unconscious gangster moaned weakly. His boss, however, had begun to puff himself back up, a nasty smile starting to spread across his face.

"You? You won't even show yourself. It's all a bluff, isn't it? You think because you're hiding and one of my mates trips over his own feet, you can make me believe you're the--"

He didn't get any further. A shape had begun to materialize, seemingly out of nothing, the formerly empty air bending and shivering as a truly menacing figure melted into existence.

He was tall and gaunt, wearing a long black coat that reached nearly to his feet. Between the coat's turned-up collar and the scarf he had tucked under it, the entire lower half of his face was obscured. The wide brim of a black slouch hat tilted down over his forehead, and below it his eyes burned an intensely electric blue. Even the two pistols he had holstered at his sides seemed less intimidating than those eyes.

Somewhere at Lestrade's side, the thug who was still upright let out a tiny whimper, like a frightened child a third his size--and then he bolted, shrieking incoherently. The figure remained motionless, those burning eyes fixed on Bobby.

**"You've heard the rumors."** The scarf moved slightly as he spoke. **"Tell me, Michael Robert Campbell. Do I look like I'm bluffing?"**

What happened next was a blur to Lestrade's fogged mind. He knew he saw Bobby lunge forward, and he knew the air did that funny shimmering thing again. That dark, chilling laugh was everywhere; Bobby seemed to be fighting with a cloud or a curl of fog, something that dissolved under his swinging fists but managed to re-form and strike him again and again until he was staggering, his nose pouring blood.

Something murky wrapped itself around the gangster's throat. He choked once, twice--and then his knees gave out and he began to babble wetly.

"Oh God, I'll do it, I'll go to the Yard, just don't kill me, please don't kill me!"

The stranger vanished, dropping Bobby with a hard thud, then flickered into being behind him.

**"I'll be watching."**

Bobby crawled towards the car, coughing out a tooth as he went.

Lestrade felt his own legs go weak. He'd just been pulled from the brink of certain death by a--a what, exactly? A phantom? A vigilante? Or was he already dead, and simply hallucinating a world in which he'd been saved at the last moment?

**"No, Detective Inspector."**

The stranger's voice no longer had the same sinister edge to it, though it remained low and unearthly.

**"You didn't imagine any of it. Difficult to believe, but your senses haven't lied to you."**

He moved forward the moment before Lestrade sagged, catching him with one wiry arm. Despite all the vanishing business a moment ago, he was certainly solid now, as steady as any normal human being.

**"Easy. It's time you went home."**

An engine thrummed somewhere far away. The world suddenly grew brighter; light fell across the stranger's face, revealing pale skin stretched over high cheekbones... but that was all Lestrade saw before his vision went blurry again and he swayed on his feet.

"I'm going to be sick," he muttered.

**"Not in my cab. Come on."**

Sure enough, a sedan with a "TAXI" sign on its hood had pulled up not three feet from them, its back door already hanging open. The stranger urged him into the seat, then slid in next to him, tugging the door shut behind them.

**"Drive."**

Lestrade pressed a hand to his eyes, hoping the pressure would clear his head a little. Another voice, this one gentle and female, floated into his ears from the front seat.

"Oh dear. Had a hard night, have we? No worries. Here--don't fret, it's only water, it'll do you good."

Someone pressed a bottle into his hand. Lestrade lifted it to his nose, sniffing it cautiously before he took a drink. It was, in fact, only water, though he couldn't deny that it made him feel much better.

"Thank you," he mumbled. It took him a moment to make his eyes re-focus properly--and to his surprise, he saw that the female voice had come from the cab's driver: a sweet-looking, almost grandmotherly woman with a flat cap covering most of her greying hair.

**"Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade."**

The stranger's voice rumbled through the interior of the cab, an almost hypnotic purr.

**"Known at the Yard as a hard worker with the occasional strange idea. You tell people your wife died of the Spanish flu back in '19, when in reality she ran away to Paris with a jazz musician."**

Lestrade bristled. "How did you--"

**"You worry about your two children. Helen and Tobias. I've saved your life, Detective Inspector, and I can ensure that their lives are well protected. But in return you will become one of my agents."**

"Agents? Look, if this is espionage..."

**"Against King and country, no. Against the criminal empires of the world, yes."**

The stranger held up something silver, something that gleamed oddly under the streetlights that flashed by as the cab sped through the streets of London. It looked like a ring with some sort of large smooth stone set in it.

**"This token will identify you to any of your fellow agents. But in the event that you need further confirmation, they have a code. If you doubt someone, ask them, 'Where was the sun?' They should respond, 'Over the oak.' Is that clear?"**

"I... wait." Lestrade shook himself. Code words and secret tokens? This seemed too dramatic to be real--like something out of the radio serials his children soaked up so eagerly every Sunday night. "How did you know about my wife? How did you know where those men would take me?"

He glanced over at the man sitting next to him, only to find that unsettling blue gaze fixed on his face as if it were staring into and through him. The stranger's shoulders moved, and a moment later his laughter flooded the inside of the car, sending a cold trickle of fear down Lestrade's spine.

**"The Shadow knows."**

 -------------

 

Author's Notes:

The Shadow parts of this fic are largely based on the 1994 film, with some elements from the radio plays and comics and just a whole lot of stuff I made up. The Shadow didn't make his debut as a character until 1930 and the radio show didn't start until 1937, but... it's a crossover fic, whatcha gonna do.

Some fun facts!

Great Britain did in fact try to enact Prohibition laws similar to the US's 19th Amendment. It didn't work. Which I guess is what happens when you're geographically sandwiched between whiskey and Guinness.

The Spanish flu was possibly the deadliest pandemic in recorded history, with a 27% fatality rate; because of the nature of the disease, young adults in the prime of life were the most likely to die. However, because it broke out right at the end of World War I and reporting on it was seen as potentially damaging to national morale in several countries, there isn't a lot of contemporary writing about it. I highly recommend Gina Kolata's excellent _Flu_ if you're curious!


	2. the honeycomb

"Now then," the cabbie said, pressing the ring into Lestrade's hand, "you're not to take this off, no matter what. He may use it to contact you, but more likely if you're needed he'll send someone or have a message sent by courier. And, of course, if you ever need a cab ride in the city, I'm the girl for you."

His head felt much clearer now that the ride was over and he'd been escorted to his front door, but there was still too much about his rescue he couldn't quite process.

"I'm--sorry, hang on." He blinked, trying to pull together rumors and scraps of information from around the Yard. "Are you... you're not Taxicab Tess, are you?"

She laughed, her eyes sparking with delight. "Sounds like something out of those adventure pictures, doesn't it? But yes, Detective Inspector, I am. I expect I will be until this car falls apart."

Theresa Hudson was something of a local legend. Some of the Yarders spoke of her with derision and others with outright admiration. Out of the hundreds of cabbies in London, she was the only woman--and, according to a handful of grateful men and women who'd enjoyed a discounted ride out of a bad neighborhood in her sedan, one of the very best.

"But how did you--"

With a gentle shushing noise, she reached over and patted his arm, all sympathetic warmth.

"He's a funny one, and no doubt. But he saved my life, just like he saved yours. The Shadow is a good man, Mr Lestrade. You've got nothing to be afraid of."

Lestrade looked down at the ring in his palm. Between the rounded blue stone that rose out of its surface and the ancient-looking markings along the band, it was a strange sight... but not one that filled him with the kind of sick dread that took him by the throat at the sight of other, more ordinary things down at the Yard. Like cash passing furtively from a police officer to a man in lockup. Like a witness coming in to recant a key piece of testimony. Like a child having to be told her father was never coming back from his beat.

"I hope not," he murmured.

*  *  *

Once Lestrade had staggered back into his house, the Shadow began to change. As he sagged into the leather seat, the unearthly glow of his eyes faded into something far more human. He reached up to pull the scarf away from his face and discard his hat.

Had anyone been around to witness the transformation, they might have been shocked by how young the man behind the Shadow looked. His hair was damp with sweat, and underneath the strangely tilted eyes his pale skin looked faintly bruised--the telltale mark of someone who slept far too little. But there was a satisfied smile playing at the edges of his mouth. Clearly, the recruitment of a new agent--particularly a Detective Inspector--was stronger than the weariness that came over him after a knock-down fight with a notorious criminal.

The cab driver, having re-situated herself behind the wheel, shot him a glance in the rear view mirror.

"Sherlock? Everything all right?"

"Fine."  He picked up the half-empty bottle of water Lestrade had left behind and took a long pull from it. "It's been a long night, Mrs Hudson, that's all."

She opened her mouth briefly, debating whether or not to voice the full extent of her concern for her charge... but then he took a breath and drew himself up a little more in his seat, the weariness fading.

"A little dinner might help," she finally suggested.

She was rewarded with a soft chuckle, quiet and nowhere near as dark as the Shadow's usual mocking laugh.

"It might at that. Take me to the Honeycomb."

*  *  *

The Honeycomb was a gem of London nightlife. Its interior glowed with blond wood, amber paneling, and gold leaf, and that glow spilled into the neighboring street, lending it a distinct warmth. The decor itself was slightly old-fashioned--more given to the curves of Art Nouveau than the sleek, angular geometry now in vogue--but to regulars and strangers alike, this only made it more charming.

One of those regulars strolled through the front door at nearly ten o'clock, just when the place was really beginning to hum.

Everyone on the staff knew him, as did anyone up on London high society. The sharply-dressed, dark-haired fellow striding towards the back of the main room was unmistakably Sherlock Holmes, wealthy young man about town and one of the city's most notorious eccentrics.

There were rumors that he'd once worked for the British government alongside his older brother, Mycroft. That his legendary intelligence had made him a force to be reckoned with during the Great War, and that he might even have been a code-breaker. And that something during the war had addled that extraordinary brain just enough to turn him into a recluse until twelve months ago.

It was common knowledge that he and his brother avoided moving in the same circles, and that they didn't speak. But it was also common knowledge that, no matter what had happened in his past and no matter how strange his behavior might be, Sherlock was essentially harmless. He had a reputation for striking moments of social awkwardness, but as far as anyone knew he was merely an odd duck.

Only two people knew the truth, the only two people he remotely considered friends. The first was, naturally, Mrs Hudson; as his personal driver _and_ his landlady she was too present in his life for him to avoid cultivating at least a little fondness towards her. The second was none other than the woman who ran the Honeycomb, Irene Adler.

Most of London society assumed that the Honeycomb's glamorous owner and the aloof gentleman who spent his evenings at her club were having an affair. That had once been true, back when they'd first met--but only for about twelve minutes and a handful of distinctly disappointing kisses. Neither of them had any interest in correcting the rumors, though: Sherlock found it gave him an alibi of sorts, separating him from his secret identity, and Irene knew well that being thought of as his mistress was infinitely less dangerous than being revealed as the devoted lover of another woman.

Tonight she was gowned in black with hints of gold, her fashionably waved hair held in place by an orchid-shaped gold pin. A young waiter, bearing two martini glasses on a tray, followed a half-step behind her as she sauntered to Sherlock's table.

"Had a hunch you might be coming," Irene smiled. "Your usual, Mr Holmes."

A genuine grin tugged at the edge of Sherlock's mouth, albeit briefly. His "usual" was nothing more than two glasses of mineral water with olives added for show. It allowed him to keep up the appearance of being a harmless half-drunk while still maintaining a clear head.

"Maybe you have some supernatural gift." He picked up one of the olives and popped it into his mouth, the picture of sarcastic indifference.

"Nonsense. I just happen to know what you like."

He shot her a wry look. Although her intellect matched his own, privately he thought her talents for deductive reasoning were wasted on the study of human behavior. People bored him stiff when they weren't committing crimes, so why dissect the workings of inferior minds? Yet, as she frequently reminded him, she was an indispensable source of gossip--and a brilliant tutor in the art of social manipulation.

She sank into the chair across from him, facing the doors of the club, her gloved fingertips drumming against the table.

"Bedlam Bobby?" she prompted. 

"Should be arriving at the Yard shortly, if he hasn't stopped to look for his left canine." He glanced up at her. "Anything else?" 

"Well, if you'd believe it, I have some news about your brother." 

Sherlock's jaw tightened.

"You assume I'm interested in anything Mycroft does." 

"This time, you should be. He's been assigned to some major project--not just intelligence, Sherlock, something much bigger. I don't know what it is, but I know it's important enough that the Army's assigned him a passel of bodyguards." She glanced past him, over his shoulder, and nodded towards the door. "Speak of the devil--looks like the head of the day watch just walked in."

Sherlock turned to look toward the door, at the new arrival who'd just crossed the threshold: a shortish blond man in a neatly-maintained military uniform. The rational part of his brain immediately sprang into action, collecting and processing details. 

_Between thirty-five and thirty-eight. Veteran of the Great War, most likely wounded in action. Survived the Spanish flu. Walks with a limp, but not all the time. Has just come into money--_

The stranger turned to look at him, and everything stopped.


	3. collision course

Honestly, John Watson wasn't sure how he'd let himself be talked into heading to the Honeycomb after work. He preferred the comfortable atmosphere of pubs to the blinding centers of upper-class nightlife. But being chosen for an extremely elite team of government bodyguards meant he was moving up in the world, and that kind of movement came with obligations--you had to be seen sometimes, to familiarize yourself with the territory.

Besides, it seemed to be the only place his new employer could name to get a decent drink. Well, that and the Diogenes, and he'd be damned if he was going to sit around in total silence for the rest of his night.

He was about to grab one of the waiters and ask for a table when it started.

For three years now he'd been plagued by the sensation: a warm pins-and-needles prickling inside his head at random moments, usually when something dangerous or sudden was about to happen. It always drew his attention to one detail, one person or object or area of a room, where an incident would start--like it was pointing him towards the pebble that was about to cause ripples in a tranquil pond. John had a hard time believing it was anything other than luck.

After all, the War had destroyed a lot of his illusions about the way the world worked.

Luck or no, though, his medical training and unusually high competency in dangerous situations made him the perfect candidate to guard one of the most valuable minds in British intelligence. Not that there had been any danger so far. Up until tonight, the pins and needles had left him alone.

The feeling started at the back of his neck, as if someone were staring at him hard enough to make his skin react. He turned, frowning, and the tingles moved into his forehead... and settled just between his eyebrows as he picked out the pale, dark-haired gentleman watching him from the corner table.

The man had a distinctly odd face--none of the individual features seemed, at first glance, to go together. But then John found his gaze drawn to the man's strange narrow eyes, somehow vividly blue even from across the room--

\--and the tingling _exploded,_ filling the inside of his skull with a wave of memory not his own.

_"This is what you did with my report?"_

_Betrayal. Guilt. Rage. Horror._

_"Two hundred and fourteen people, Mycroft. Civilians."_

_Newspaper ink on his hands, between his fingers, sticky and thick as blood._

_"You've made me a murderer!"_

Almost as soon as it had begun, the barrage of emotions and images stopped, leaving only the half-painful prickling in their wake. John put a hand to his forehead, trying to massage away the discomfort.

He definitely needed a drink.

*   *   *

"Well, he's quite the handsome devil, I have to--"

Irene stopped short, taking in the sudden change in Sherlock's body language, the gleam of something otherworldly in his eyes.

"Sherlock?"

He snapped to attention as if he'd been struck.

"Sorry, what?"

Despite his excellent acting skills, there were some cues he simply couldn't hide. Like the sweat beading at his hairline, or his wide pupils, or...

"Good God, Sherlock."

Before he could move, she'd reached across the table, her fingers brushing the backs of his knuckles. His hand was clamped so tightly around the stem of the martini glass that it had cracked in two. A thin red trickle snaked down to the base of his wrist.

Irene had come to accept that her friend would never tell her everything about how he became the Shadow. His alter ego could be, by turns, intriguing and frightening. But sometimes, when she caught accidental glimpses of the impossible inner life, she had to wonder how much he refused to tell her and how much he would keep holding back, even at the cost of his own equilibrium.

"Don't insult my intelligence," she murmured. "Something happened to you just now. I saw it. What was it?"

Sherlock looked down at his own hand, at the blood that inched ever closer to his snow-white shirt cuffs. Slowly, he began to relax his fingers, forcing them to uncurl from the broken glass.

"When I deduce things about people," he said, with an eerie forced calm, "their first reaction is generally to call me a mind-reader. It's a ridiculous assumption, of course, especially since there are so many details in plain sight that give away their secrets. And for all the unscientific tricks I've learned..."

Irene slid a gloved fingertip parallel to the edge of the wound in his palm, in what she hoped would be a reassuring gesture.

"Are you telling me," she said slowly, "that you read that man's mind?"

A bead of sweat slid down from Sherlock's temple to the corner of his jaw, down to the edge of his shirt collar, and was gone. When she glanced up from its path, she saw that his face had rearranged itself into the controlled mask he usually presented to the world--whatever had happened to him, whatever had made him vulnerable for a split second, he'd pushed it back into some secret place.

"I think I'll need to do a bit more research on him," Sherlock murmured, as if she hadn't spoken.

As Irene pulled her hand back from his, she noticed that the cut had shrunk to a thin red line, as if a week's worth of healing had taken place in a few seconds. She tried not to think about it.

*  *  *

Giving himself another little shake, just for good measure, John headed down the steps and straight towards the bar. Since these drinks were on his new employer, he might as well have something fancy.

The bartender--a rather stoic-looking fellow who couldn't have been less than six feet tall--nodded as John took a seat, but didn't set aside the cocktail shaker he was holding. John took the opportunity to peruse one of the drink menus that had been laid out on the bar. Most of the house specialties were things he'd never heard of before; some of them, like the Persian Slipper, looked a little intimidating. But one particular item near the top of the menu caught his attention.

"Scuse me," John said, raising his voice enough to be heard over the rattle of ice hitting the bottom of a glass. "Can I get a--"

"--Study in Scarlet, yes, sir."

For a moment he merely stared as the bartender set it down in front of him. True to its name, it was a strikingly vivid shade of red... and, much more disconcertingly, it was exactly what he'd planned to order.

"Um," he began. "How--"

"On the house, sir. Courtesy of the table at the back."

He glanced towards the table in question. There was a woman sitting there as well, who seemed to have become very interested in one of the waiters--but her dark-haired companion was watching John with a cool, level expression.

The back of John's neck began to tingle again, faintly.

With a muttered word of thanks to the bartender, he took the drink and got to his feet. If he was, in fact, walking into danger, he vastly preferred to meet it head-on. After all, it was his job to make sure nothing crept up on him or his employer, and if he was caught unawares off-duty--well, he'd heard stories about the wrath of Mycroft Holmes.

_Mycroft._ The name tugged at his thoughts as he crossed the room. Not a common name, surely. And not that it had much to do with his strange experience of a few minutes before: ideas didn't just force their way from one person's mind to another's. That was the stuff of pulp novels and radio plays. Pure fiction.

The stranger kept his gaze carefully trained on him until they were almost within arm's reach of one another. John stood up a little straighter, hoping he looked official enough to discourage any trouble, although he couldn't quite keep himself from wetting his lips nervously with the tip of his tongue.

"Excuse me."

As he spoke, the stranger tipped his head slightly. There was something like a question in the man's odd tilted eyes.

"You, ah." John cleared his throat. "You and your friend ordered this for me?"

"Not my friend. Just me, I'm afraid."

His voice was far deeper than John had expected. The tingling slowly began to make its way down John's spine, along with a kind of unidentifiable heat.

"After all, anyone who has to spend a significant amount of time with my older brother deserves a stiff drink."

John blinked, taken aback. The family resemblance was slight, but yes, it was there--and, of course, he'd been made aware earlier in the day that certain members of his employer's immediate family were not to be allowed access to his office under any circumstances.

"You're... Sherlock Holmes?"

"Much to Mycroft's chagrin, yes." The younger Holmes reached for his martini glass, his smile widening. "I'm surprised you didn't call me 'Layabout' or 'That Useless Leech'. He rarely refers to me as anything else."

Truth be told, Mycroft Holmes had referred to his brother with a kind of irritated resignation rather than open hostility... but this Sherlock Holmes bore little resemblance to the cold, anti-social figure sketched out by the stories the rest of the staff told.

"No, it's--good to meet you, Mr. Holmes." He had to resist the urge to salute. "Captain John Watson--"

"--formerly of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, I think." Was it his imagination, or was there something challenging in the man's tone? "A doctor, too, primarily treating combat injuries... largely in Turkey."

John stiffened. Yes, the Fusiliers insignia was sewn onto the shoulder of his uniform, but the rest of it...

"How did you--"

Sherlock raised his glass as if offering some sort of toast.

"How do you think?"

This time it was definitely a challenge.

John lifted his own glass and took a drink. It was more potent than he'd expected, and the flavor was complex: honey, red currant, bitter orange.

As the first sip mellowed from a burn to a glow in the back of his throat, he thought he saw a smear of brilliant red along the inside of Sherlock's wrist--but the moment he focused on the man's hand it vanished, as if it had never been there at all.


End file.
